First Family

Kushner and Trump May Have Ignored the Best Possible Advice About Russia

President Donald Trump sits with Chris Christie and Jared Kushner at a panel discussion on an opioid and drug abuse at the White House on March 29, 2017.

By Shawn Thew/Getty Images.

Jared Kushner, a senior adviser, son-in-law, and privileged princeling in Donald Trump’s White House inner circle, was frustrated. It was the day after President Trump fired F.B.I. Director James Comey on May 9—a decision in which Kushner fully supported his father-in-law, according to one White House aide—and by the time he walked into a West Wing meeting on May 10, the reaction from lawmakers, former intelligence officials, and the media had made it clear that they were staring down the barrel of a problem. Well into the meeting, attended by principals and the communications staff, Kushner provided a diagnosis—not coincidentally, the same as the president’s—of what had gone wrong.

“He expressed his frustration to the communications team that there was nobody defending the administration, and when he’s frustrated with people, he says it to their face,” the aide told me. “There didn’t seem to be a plan in place.”

The communications team, of course, only had about an hour’s notice of Trump’s decision, leaving them scrambling to explain the firing, which undoubtedly would be viewed as an attempt to quash an ongoing inquiry. What resulted were days of evolving explanations that were subsequently walked back, changed, and later discarded in a way that eroded the credibility of the communications officials and surrogates who spoke to the media.

This blame game and its growing blowback resulted in the West Wing’s first real casualty. On Tuesday morning, Axios broke the news that White House Communications Director Mike Dubke had resigned from his post on May 18, a little more than a week after the firing. The president accepted his decision immediately, according to Politico.

Since then, Kushner has had even more reason to share his father-in-law’s perspective. On Friday, The Washington Postreported that in a meeting with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak during the transition, Kushner proposed setting up a secret channel between the incoming administration and the Kremlin at Russian diplomatic facilities in order to conceal their communications from monitoring. Congressional and federal investigators are also looking into what Kushner had to gain from a subsequent meeting with a Russian banker who has ties to Vladimir Putin, according to The New York Times. The Timesnoted that Kushner and Trump have both complained about the “unfair” attention being paid to his actions.

The emerging strategy for dealing with the investigation, in true Trumpian fashion, is less about changing the substance than spinning the press. Trump, who, for years, masqueraded as his own spokesman under a pseudonym in order to plant stories with and deliver missives to New York tabloids, seems to be reverting back to the take-no-prisoners approach to amplifying his message. As Axios reported, Trump himself will address the public more, both on the road and at home, because, as one official put it, “He says things exactly the way he wants them to be said.” He also may bring on several political fighters who served as attack dogs throughout the campaign. A month ago, Kushner himself hired his own spokesman, Josh Raffel, who had flacked for Kushner Companies years ago.

But thus far, they’ve ignored a more cerebral, forward-looking strategy from an unusual source. Earlier this year, Chris Christie offered a bit of advice to both Kushner and Trump, one person who spoke to the New Jersey governor earlier this month and relayed the conversation told me. “He said that he tried to explain that he had conducted an internal investigation with his own lawyers during the Bridgegate scandal, and at the very least, it gave them a heads-up as to what was coming,” this person said. Christie was referring to the investigation into his team creating traffic problems at the George Washington Bridge in order to allegedly retaliate against a Democratic New Jersey mayor who didn’t endorse him during his re-election campaign. While two members of Christie’s senior staff were sentenced to prison in March, Christie himself was never charged in the scheme.

Christie also successfully prosecuted Kushner’s father a decade ago, putting him in prison on 18 counts of witness tampering, illegal campaign donations, and tax evasion. Even still, the source told me, Christie said his suggestion was rebuffed by Kushner and Trump. “They both laughed in his face.”

Brian Murray, Christie’s spokesman, called this “erroneous” and contended that the governor never suggested that to anyone. The White House had no comment on the record. Last week, two people told me that Christie had said that Kushner had called him earlier this month asking if the president should hire a lawyer. Both sides denied this, though they confirmed that Kushner and Christie talk frequently. Trump has since hired Marc Kasowitz, his longtime attorney, to help him navigate the Russia investigation. Kasowitz, a well-respected litigator, is also known for his aggressiveness

This wouldn’t be the first time Trump has rebuffed such a look into his own affairs. During the campaign, particularly as sexual-assault allegations surfaced, he reportedly balked at his aides’ suggestion that his own team do a deep dive into his past in order to prepare themselves for any opposition research that could come to light. Corey Lewandowski, Trump’s first campaign manager, was among those that advocated conducting such an internal evaluation—similar to the kind most public officials undergo—but the suggestion was ignored.

On Monday night, as the president and Kushner continued to face the fallout of the princeling’s interaction with Russian officials, Lewandowski was spotted entering the West Wing.